Faculty
Giovanni Borgognone is associate professor of History of Political Thought at the University of Turin, where he teaches History of Political Thought, International Political Theory, Theories and History of Democracy. His research focuses on the history of modern and contemporary political thought. He specializes in American political thought, global history of ideas, technocracy, managerialism and élites theory. He edits the book series Politikòn Zôon published by Aracne. He is member of the editorial board of Storia del pensiero politico and Passato e presente. His main publications include Max Eastman e le libertà americane (Milan, 2004), La destra americana. Dall’isolazionismo ai neocons (Rome-Bari, 2004), Il socialismo dal basso. Hal Draper e la rifondazione democratica del marxismo (Florence, 2008), Superpower Europe? Interpretazioni statunitensi del «sogno europeo» (Milan, 2010), Come nasce una dittatura. L’Italia del delitto Matteotti (Rome-Bari, 2012, 20132), Storia degli Stati Uniti. La democrazia americana dalla fondazione all’era globale (Milan, 2013, 20162), Tecnocrati del progresso. Il pensiero politico americano del Novecento tra capitalismo, liberalismo e democrazia (Turin, 2015). He is the editor of the Italian translation of R.F. Kennedy’s discourses Sogno cose che non sono state mai (Turin, 2012).
Paolo Caraffini is Assistant Professor of History of European Integration, Democracy and Representation in the EU, Lab on Research Structure, at the University of Turin. His main area of research is European integration, with particular emphasis on the contribution of Italian Europeanism, the role of pro-European movements and eminent figures from European Federalism, the European political parties. He also studied Europeanism in France, particularly during the Resistance and the Gaullist period, and French Politics in Africa related to the European integration process. He is Associate Editor of “De Europa. European and Global Studies Journal” and member of the Centre of Studies on Europe (TO-EU), in the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society at the University of Turin. He is also member of the Italian Branch of the European Community Studies Association (ECSA), and of the Italian Society of International History. Among his publications: Costruire l’Europa dal basso. Il ruolo del Consiglio italiano del Movimento europeo 1948-1985 (Bologna, 2008); Un grand commis e la dimensione internazionale: Giuseppe Petrilli e il processo di integrazione europea (1950-1989) (Milan, 2015); L’Unione Europea tra istituzioni e opinione pubblica, co-edited with M. Belluati, (Rome, 2015).
Barbara Curli is associate professor of Contemporary history in the Department of Culture Politics and Society of Turin University, and teaches courses on Global history (the geopolitical history of energy sources) and History of European integration. B.A. in Political Science, University of Perugia; M.A. in International Relations, The Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, Bologna and Washington; Ph.D. in History, European University Institute, Florence. Fulbright Distinguished Chair in European history, Georgetown University (2010); Visiting professor in World economic history, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (2008). Editor in Chief, Il Mestiere di storico (2011-2014). Main research interests: history of energy, international economic and business history, gender history. Co-founder and member of NIREG, Nuclear Italy Research Group, participant to the European financed project on the social and political history of non-carbon energy territories. Recent publications include: Discourses and Counter-Discourses on Europe. From the Enlightenment to the EU, (ed with M. Ceretta) London, Routledge, 2017.
Lorenzo Kamel is associate professor of History at the University of Turin, IAI's Research Studies director, and the scientific director of the New-Med Research Network. He holds a 2-years MA in Israel Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a PhD in History from the University of Bologna, and held teaching and research positions in many universities in the Middle East, the US, and Europe, including the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, where he served as a Marie Curie Experienced Researcher, and Harvard University, where he was also a Postdoc Fellow for 2 years. He is the editor of 3 book series and a regular contributor to media outlets such as Al-Jazeera and Rai1. Among his publications, 5 authored books – including ‘The Middle East from Empire to Sealed Identities (Edinburgh UP) and 'Imperial Perceptions of Palestine: British Influence and Power in Late Ottoman Times’ (IB Tauris) – for which he was awarded with the 1st Prize of the Palestine Academic Book Award, the G.Sciacca International Prize, and the Fritz-Thyssen Grant. Other publications include 6 edited books - including ‘Arab Spring and Peripheries’ (Routledge) - and over 30 articles on the British Journal for Middle Eastern Studies, Mediterranean Politics, Oriente Moderno, Eurasian Studies, New Middle Eastern Studies, International Spectator, Contemporanea, Passato e Presente. He is 38 years old and the proud father of Valerie and Niccolò.
Marco Mariano (marco.mariano@unito.it) is associate professor of U.S. History at the University of Turin, Italy. He specializes in inter-American relations, modern Atlantic history, and U.S. intellectual history. He has been research fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies of Columbia University and at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies of New York University. He was also chargé de enseignement at SciencesPo in Paris and Reims. He is the editor of Defining the Atlantic Community. Culture, Intellectuals, and Policies in the Mid-Twentieth Century (Routledge 2010) and the author of L’America nell’“Occidente”. Storia della dottrina Monroe (America in “the West”. A History of the Monroe Doctrine, Carocci 2013). He is currently working on the construction of the “Western hemisphere” through 20th century and on consular networks in the 19th-century Atlantic world. His latest publications are: “The Modern Atlantic Space: a History that ‘Dare not Speak its Name’?”, Journal of Transnational American Studies 8, 1 (2017); “‘Un pont sur l’Atlantique’. Transatlantic Steamers and Nation Building in the Kingdom of Sardinia, 1830-1859”, Contemporanea 21, 2 (2018).
Alberto Masoero (BA University of Turin 1982, MA Princeton University 1985, PhD University of Turin 1990) is Associate Professor of Russian and Eurasian History at the Department of Historical Studies of the University of Turin. He taught Russian History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice for many years. He has published on populism, Russian economic thought and the image of the United States in the Tsarist Empire. He is currently working on a project on representations of resettlement and spatial transformation in late imperial Russia, mostly Siberia. He was co-editor of Russian Social Thought. Foreign Models and National Context (Milan: 2000, with Antonello Venturi). Among his recent publications are: Territorial Colonization in Late Imperial Russia. Stages in the Development of a Concept (“Kritika. Exploration in Russian and Eurasian History”, 2014), Layers of Property in the Tsar's Settlement Colony: Projects of Land Privatization in Siberia in the Late Nineteenth Century (Central Asia Survey, 2010), as well as Citizenship [grazhdanstvennost’] and Land Rights [zemleustrojstvo] in Tsarist Siberia (“Contemporanea”, 2016).
Federica Morelli is associate professor of History of the Americas at the University of Turin where she teaches History of Americas, History of the Atlantic World, and Colonial and Postcolonial History. Her work engages with colonial Latin American history, early modern European history, imperial history, and Atlantic history. She has focused in particular on Latin American independence, the age of the Atlantic Revolutions, the definition of citizenship and the construction of racial categories in colonial and post-colonial contexts. She is associated member of Mondes Américains at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and director of the Bairati Center on American and Transatlantic Studies at the University of Turin. She is the author of Territorio o Nación. Reforma y disolucion del espacio imperial en Ecuador, 1765-1830 (Madrid, 2005), Il Mondo Atlantico. Una storia senza confini (Rome, 2013), and L’indipendenza dell’America spagnola. Dalla crisi della monarchia alle nuove repubbliche (Florence, 2015). She is currently writing a book on Race and Citizenship. Free People of Color in the Spanish Atlantic (Routledge).
Sofia Venturoli is assistant professor in anthropology at the University of Turin where she teaches Latin American anthropology and Political anthropology. Sofia received her M.Litt in Social Anthropology and Amerindian Studies at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland and her PhD in anthropology at University of Bologna in Italy. Her main research interests include social and cultural changes among Latin-American indigenous groups, ethnogenesis, indigenous groups in urban areas, indigenous political participation with particular attention to gender perspectives, collective and individual self-representation. She has fieldwork experiences in the quechua Peruvian Andes, in the zoque area of Chiapas, Mexico, among the Pankararé group in the São Paulo metropolitan area in Brasil, and among migrant Peruvian communities in Italy. Among her publications: Formas de ciudadanía en América Latina (with Mirta Lobato) 2013, Los Hijos de Huari. Historia y etnografía de tres pueblos andinos 2011, Il paesaggio come testo. La creazione di un’identità tra territorio e memoria nell’area andina 2005.
Tatiana Borisova is an Associate Professor of History at the National Research University Higher School of Economics St. Petersburg. She holds two PhD degrees in History (from St.Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences) and Law (from University of Turku). She published widely on various aspects of Russian legal tradition in international legal and historical journals. Her most recent articles include: Public Meaning of the Zasulich Trial 1878: Law, Politics, and Gender (2016) and Russia’s Legal Trajectories (2018) (with Jane Burbank). She co-edited a study The Legal Dimension in Cold-War Interactions: Some Notes from the Field (Brill, 2012). She held fellowships at Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies of (University of Oxford), Helsinki Collegium. In 2018-19 she was awarded Davis Centre Fellowship at Princeton University to work on her monograph entitled: ‘For my enemies, the law’: A Cultural History of Law and Justice in Russia, 1860-1905.
Alexander Kamenskii, PhD, is professor of history and head of the School of History at National Research University – Higher School of Economics in Moscow where he teaches history of Russian Empire in 18th and 19th century. He has had visiting positions at the Université Paris 8, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), Stanford University. He is author of more than 300 books and articles published in Russia, USA, Germany, France, Sweden, Italy, Hungary and Poland.
Evgeny Khvalkov, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of History, National Research University Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg. He teaches ancient, medieval and early modern history. He is a Head of the Research and Study Group 'Bishops, Doges and Merchants: Texts of Medieval Italian Cities of XIII-XV Centuries'. He authored The colonies of Genoa in the Black Sea region: evolution and transformation. New York and London; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.
Jeanne Kormina is a Professor of Anthropology and Religious Studies at the Department of Sociology, Higher School of Economics. Her research interests focus on Religion in Soviet and Contemporary Russia, Pilgrimage & Other Religious Practices, Politics of Memory, Anthropology of Post-Truth.
Her publications include two monographs and two edited volumes and many chapters and articles, including
- (with Angie Heo) Introduction: Religion and Borders in (Post–)Cold War Peripheries // Journal of Religion. 2019. Vol. 99. No. 1. P. 1-17.
- (with Sonja Luehrmann) The Social Nature of Prayer in a Church of the Unchurched: Russian Orthodox Christianity from Its Edges // Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 2018. Vol. 86. No. 2. P. 393-424;
- Canonizing Soviet Pasts in Contemporary Russia: The Case of Saint Matrona of Moscow, in: J. Boddy, M. Lambeck (eds), A Companion to Anthropology of Religion. L. : Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Ch. 22. P. 409-424;
Leonid Gorizontov, PhD, professor of the School of History, National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow where he teaches comparative history of empires and history of Eastern Europe in the XIX–XXth centuries. He has had visiting positions at Hokkaido University and Warsaw University. He is author of more than 170 scientific works published in Russia, Poland , USA, Japan, Austria, Slovakia and edited several books on Polish and Ukrainian history. He is a member of Commission of Historians of Russia and Poland and International Commission for the History of Slavic Studies.
Alexander M. Semyonov, Ph.D., is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History, National Research University Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg where he teaches Russian and Soviet history, as well as global and comparative history of empires. He is a co-founder and co-editor of Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post Soviet Space and co-editor with Ronald Suny of a book series “Imperial Transformations” (with Routledge). Semyonov have had visiting positions at the W. Averell Harriman Institute, Columbia University (USA), Center for European Studies, Rutgers University (USA), Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz, Germany), the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, the University of Regensburg (Germany), University of Jyvaskyla (Finland), the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, USA), and University of Chicago (USA). He edited and authored: New Imperial History of the Post-Soviet Space (Kazan: Center for the Study of Empire and Nationalism, 2004) Empire Speaks Out: Languages of Rationalization and Self-Description in the Russian Empire (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2009); New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia, 2 vols. (Kazan: Ab Imperio, 2017).
Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov is Associate Professor in Anthropology at the Department of History, Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg and the editor-in-cheif of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, the journal of the European Association for Social Anthropologists (EASA). His research interests interlink the anthropology of the state and theories of exchange, post-socialist transformations, historical legacies of empires and Soviet socialism. He specialises on Siberia and Russia, and international relations between Russia, Western Europe and the United States. His publications include article, e.g., “Hybrid Peace: Ethnographies of War” (Annual Review of Anthropology, 2018), and monographs Two Lenins: A Brief Anthropology of Time (HAU Malinowski Monograph Series and Chicago University Press 2017) and The Social Life of the State in Sub-Arctic Siberia (Stanford University Press 2003), and the exhibition catalogue Gifts to Soviet Leaders (Pinakotheke 2006).
Martin Aust teaches Eastern European and Russian History at Bonn University (Germany). His areas of research are 18/19th-century imperial Russia, 19th-century Russia in global history and contested memories in relations between Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia. His latest publications are books on the Russian revolutions and Russia's imperial heritage: Die Russische Revolution. Vom Zarenreich zum Sowjetimperium, Munich 2017 (C.H. Beck) and Die Schatten des Imperiums. Russland seit 1991, Munich 2019 (C.H. Beck)
Giuseppe Marcocci (Oxford University)
Jean-Frédéric Schaub teaches at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris). Specialist in the comparative history of the Iberian Empires, he has been visiting professor at Yale, Michigan, Oxford, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and NYU. He has published as single author books about different topics: the Jewish community in the Northern African city of Oran; the union of Spanish and Portuguese crowns in Renaissance Europe; the influence of the Spanish religious and political models on absolutist France; the historical background of Aphra Behn’s novel Oroonoko; the challenge of writing a global history of Europe. His essay on politics and race in historical perspective came out in 2015 in French (Seuil) and in 2019 in English (Princeton UP).
Edoardo Tortarolo teaches early modern history at the University of Eastern Piedmont since 1993 and is a permanent fellow of the Academy of the Sciences in Turin and a member of the Italian Committee on Historical Studies. His research interests cover the 18th-century intellectual history and the history of historical writing from the 16th to the 21st century. A Humboldt fellow in 1989 and 1990, in 2006 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and in 2010 the Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Italian History at Northwestern University. In 2015 he was a Trinity Long Room Visiting Fellow, Queen’s College, Dublin, and in 2018 the recipient of the Senior Lessing Fellowship at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel. He is the author of The Invention of Freedom of the Press. Censorship and Writers in the 18th Century, Springer 2016, Diesseits und jenseits der Alpen. Deutsche und italienische Kultur im 18. Jahrhundert, Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2011, L’illuminismo. Dubbi e ragioni della modernità, Carocci 1999, La ragione sulla Sprea. Coscienza storica e cultura politica nell'illuminismo berlinese, il Mulino 1989, Illuminismo e rivoluzioni. Biografia politica di Filippo Mazzei, Franco Angeli 1987.